That being said, I'll settle for a compromise. I want to compensate for Double Quotes in Body copy in an epub, universally. Like this:

...."I want this."
.....I want this.

Notice, the 'I' lines up vertically - well, close. And when this works, it does make a difference in the reading experience, believe it or not. That's what I want; to move the double quote into the margin. I can do this by subtracting out the space differences in the css, and re-style the quote-starting lines vs the non-quote-starting lines. Laborious, but it works.

So, I can build a whopping table that lists a large number of possibilities, if I only knew how to tell the css which font was going to happen.
And sure, I can cascade the css call, but I don't know how to get an if-then sort of statement to work with an epub to make the compensation dynamically.

Embedding could solve this, but the embedding solutions is also fraught with peril, as there are so many epub reading implementations that all seem to take a no-doubt-original-but-different approach, that embedding is a crap shoot at best (and to port to Kindle? Right out.). Because when the font calls don't work, the compensation is obviously wrong and looks worse than no double quote compensation at all.

It's these two lines that are giving me the concern:
text-indent:15.8pt;
text-indent:20.9pt;
Because if this isn't looked at with a Sony Reader, and the font used by the target device isn't Dutch Roman, those numbers are wrong. Hence, my dilemma and need for a dynamic fix, based on the font that is actually being used.

-bjc

p.s. Oh, and, you see why I use Word? I can use a macro to find the lines that start with double quotes and change the style to the double-quote style. Relatively painless.

pholy

07-04-2010, 11:16 AM

But... but... (sputter)... I just enlarged the font and now the reflow has moved the quoted sentence away from the beginning of the line... What now?

It seems to me that the hanging quote has to be a reader implemented feature, like ligatures, to actually work properly. Of course, if you want zero margins, you can't have hanging quotes!

Should we start a 'Good Typography Requires:' feature list? Would 'hanging quotes' be near the top? Is it an ordered list anyway? Should I start a new thread?

cmdahler

07-04-2010, 11:50 AM

There are so many things ePub needs in order to be acceptable as a typographic platform. Implementing a true optical margin option in which not just punctuation but also portions of letters such as the W or A are allowed to extend slightly beyond the margin to create the look of a balanced margin is just one of many. The only recourse at the moment is to hand-tune things like hanging punctuation, but that only works for one font size.

It's such a shame that the designers of the ePub standard seemed to have no interest in typography. Hopefully the standard will keep improving over the years until we get something that is actually typographically acceptable. Until then, I generally can't get more than a few pages into an ePub before being so distracted and irritated by the goofy typography that I can't really enjoy the book.

brewt

07-04-2010, 02:04 PM

I mis-typed above. I don't make the side-to-side space compensators in points, I do it in ems, so that when the point size is changed, the compensation adjusts appropriately to the new size.
Real typography can only be achieved with actual full control over the space presented. The current Epub spec is more of a quick and dirty approach. The one under proposal has indications of better control, without much detail (that I've found yet) on how to accomplish that.
On a real web page, scripting solves lots of these problems; I think there's concern about how carried away we could get if scripting took over in e-reading. Don't know why, bad scripting isn't that much worse than other kinds of bad data - bad characters, lack of reflow, etc.
Html5, anyone?
-bjc

troymc

07-04-2010, 02:25 PM

Should we start a 'Good Typography Requires:' feature list?

How about at least a list of recommended typography-related resources? I know I have 1000 questions about the "right" way to do things. And aren't there different schools of thought? (eg. MLA, APA, Chicago)

Sometimes when working with polytonic greek & old english I feel we've been cursed with this limited 102-key keyboard.

What do you guys think of The Elements of Typographic Style?

Troy

charleski

07-05-2010, 04:40 AM

There are so many things ePub needs in order to be acceptable as a typographic platform.
The problem here lies not so much with ePub as with CSS. CSS2 is antique, but neither CSS3 nor XSL:FO have the capability to accommodate complex layout-driven designs.

Relatively complex kerning modifications such as optical margin alignment either require specific support in the User Agent (Reading System) or would require ePub to use a presentation scheme fully capable of scripting. The latter is very unlikely, but with growing mobile processor power it's possible we may see more sophisticated UA-based rendering appear in the future.

And I hate to nag, but:
No wisdom on how to tell what font is being used on the target system, and no way to adjust the css based on that - true?

-bjc

p.s. Calling All Trophy Mistresses with Winning Lottery Tickets!

Jellby

07-05-2010, 10:32 AM

No wisdom on how to tell what font is being used on the target system, and no way to adjust the css based on that - true?

Not that I know of. And no way to "query" the font or glyph sizes (other than by using "em" units). Besides, the possibility of kerning pairs means that even if you know the exact size of a " glyph, you might end up with misaligned lines.

brewt

07-05-2010, 11:35 AM

I've had a degree of success knowing that size. As long as I'm rendering for devices I have on hand, it's close enough to be close enough. Examples at: http://home.comcast.net/~brewt.blacklist/site/

And I've tried cascading the font calls, which also has a degree of working, if I uninstall the first font, the second one seems to kick in (at least, in ade).

I'm finding that whatever sense I had when designing the set of numbers I'm using now is weird enough that I'm having trouble porting it to other font sets.